From: Gennady Bystritsky <Gennady.Bystritsky@...>
Date: 2006-08-22T01:11:32+09:00
Subject: Re: detect user

require 'etc'

current_user = Etc.getpwuid

p current_user.name 
p current_user.dir

It works on any Unix system, not only on Mac OS X.  Not sure about
Windows, though.

Enjoy ;-)
Gennady.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Morton Goldberg [mailto:m_goldberg@ameritech.net] 
> Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 12:25 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: detect user
> 
> I'm running on OS X, too. Here is what works for me in getting user  
> environment info:
> 
>        user = ENV['USER'] # user login name
>        home = ENV['HOME'] # user login path
> 
> The second seems to be what you are looking for.
> 
> Regards, Morton
> 
> On Aug 20, 2006, at 2:41 PM, Ryan Kaye wrote:
> 
> > Im new to ruby and trying to learn by building a small app for mac  
> > osx.
> > So far I love it. However, one thing I want to do is to detect the
> > current user (of the app's) system directory name ie -
> > /Users/johnsmith/... - johnsmith being what I want get.
> >
> > One way I tried was to use a system call such as
> >
> > system("Users")
> >
> > but although this will output the current user in the 
> console it will
> > not store the name as a variable because, as im sure you know, the
> > system call returns a boolean and not the result of the call.
> >
> > Anybody know of an alternative way.
> 
>